Leading Tories are demanding change to government education policy and an easing of cuts, amid predictions that councils in Conservative-run heartlands will soon be unable to provide school places for all the children in their areas.

Control over all schools admissions should be handed back to local education authorities as part of a reform process that would see the eventual phasing out of academies and free schools, Andy Burnham will announce.

Ed Miliband will revive the central pledge at the heart of Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997 when he announces that a Labour government would restore the cap on class sizes for children aged five, six and seven.

It was the job he had always craved, under the prime minister he had backed from the very beginning. But last week Michael Gove was relieved from command of England's schools, and shunted to the parliamentary backwater of the whip's office. David Cameron's old friend simply had to go after starting one too many fights.

Leading Tories are demanding change to government education policy and an easing of cuts, amid predictions that councils in Conservative-run heartlands will soon be unable to provide school places for all the children in their areas.